The Durability of Concrete
by David Long

Readers who remember SCARS in its early days may recall that in 1987 the Society was given a substantial archive of material relating to the building of concrete barges at Fiddlers Ferry at the end of the Great War. In the months following I carried out substantial research into these vessels, and soon became quite an authority on them. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to carry on the research, which has sat in folders in my study since. My interest has been awakened, however, by an email from Norway.

The writer, Svein Rød, from the island of Gossen, found me via the Penketh local history site and its mention of the Fiddlers Ferry yard. He was searching for information about a barge called the CRETECOVE… because it still exists! In August he wrote:

"The old lady is partly still alive here in Røssøyvågen located on the island Gossen at the west coast of Norway. (Close to Molde. The new subsea gas pipeline to Easington has its starting point here at Nyhamna, Gossen.)" He also sent me this 2003 aerial photograph of her, seen on the left, forming part of a new marina recently built in the harbour:

He wrote further that the barge was towed there by the Germans in 1942. She was carrying material to build an airstrip nearby, and was then used as a berth for further supplies to be unloaded, by Russian Prisoners of War. 

He tells me he has written up the history of this project, and is presently having it translated into English for me, and I hope to publish it here in due course. From the information I had gathered I was able to tell him of the barge's history from its launch in 1920 until 1925 when it was sold to a Norwegian concrete firm and disappeared from the records.

(For anyone who wants to find out the full extent of the WW1 Concrete Ships story the website www.mareud.com/Ferro-Concrete/f-c-list.htm is a good starting point, but my own researches, and this fresh contact from Norway, show the record is incomplete.)

Svein is presently investigating what happened to the barge between 1925 and 1942 when it was brought to his village by the Germans to help them in their war against Britain. Quite an ironic event in itself, since the vessel was one of 60 barges, and 12 steam tugs, ordered by the Admiralty in 1918 as part of our war effort against the Germans in World War I.

I have sent Svein copies of most of our photographs of the building of the concrete ships, including this magnificent one of the CRETECOVE soon after her launch in 1920, being taken under tow by two steam tugs from the Manchester Ship Canal Company. Although she may look as if she has an engine herself, she was a dumb barge, and the smoke from her funnel is from the steam engine used to power her rudder, winches, and anchor.

The CRETECOVE was one of four such barges laid down at Fiddlers Ferry. However, only one other, the CRETECAMP, was launched, in 1919. The photograph below shows her just before her launch, with the partially-built CRETECOVE on the slipway to her left. The barges were built of pre-cast concrete sections, while most of the rest of the Admiralty order were cast in one piece in a massive wooden mould. One of the items in our archive is a brochure produced by Ritchie and Black, the patentees of the pre-cast system, comparing the merits of it against the more cumbersome monolithic mould system. We can certainly now prove that the CRETECOVE has stood the test of time!

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